suddenly: where we live now will be on view from January 24 through April 12, 2009, at the Pomona College Museum of Art in Claremont. Exhibition curator Stephanie Snyder, director of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, will lead a walkthrough with participating artists on Saturday, January 24 at 4:00 p.m., immediately followed by an opening reception held at the Museum on Saturday, January 24 from5:00-7:00 p.m.

suddenly was born of German urban planner Thomas Sieverts’s observation that “the shaping of the landscape where we live can no longer be achieved by the traditional resources of town planning, urban design, and architecture. New ways must be explored, which are as yet unclear.”

In response to Sieverts’s observation, the exhibition—which is global in its scope and reach—seeks to imagine the possibilities of spaces and experiences that have an indigenous history (the parking lot, for instance), but that exist beyond historical definitions of city and countryside, and conventional material cycles of development and disuse. Through a myriad of representations, texts, and activities that offer far reaching symbolic and strategic alternatives to capitalism’s functionalist agendas, the artists and writers in this expansive global project are re-imagining the landscape where we live now as an independent identity to be reshaped in the hands and minds of its occupants.

suddenly includes a range of projects and media such as painting, photography, and video, and also includes community-based activities such as communal dinners, spontaneous public lectures, and a city-wide poster initiative. The exhibition will evolve as it tours the world through 2012.

Among the events will be Michael Hebb’s multiple-day expedition (The Corridor Project), which will depart from the Pomona College Museum of Art in order to investigate the social and convivial potential of the I-5 freeway corridor as it makes its way to the Santa Ana River. Hebb and a group of explorers will establish “common tables” of sustenance and sociality in conduit spaces typically overlooked or abandoned. The expedition’s material artifacts—tables, chairs, dishes, etc.—and documentation of the journey will be installed in the exhibition upon their return. In another example, New York artist Marc Joseph Berg is creating a series of posters exploring the ‘meta data’ used to organize everyday life within the context of commercial photographic imagery—“stock” photography. Joseph’s posters explore how global capitalism translates its ideology to consumers. These posters will be freely distributed from the gallery, and hung across the Pomona College campus and throughout the greater Los Angeles area.

suddenly comprises a set of exhibitions curated by Stephanie Snyder, with an annotated reader edited by author Matthew Stadler, and a series of public events that attempt to re-imagine cityscapes with contemporary art, literature, and the conversations they spark. For more extensive project information, including event listings, audio recordings, and to order project publications, visit: www.suddenly.org.